My key takeaway from this entire situation is that authorities in Europe and USA don't understand how exponent works. Every country that is now suffering from the pandemic went through "c'mon, it's just 10 cases" phase. We had ~two months to observe how the situation unfolds in Asia, yet learned nothing. As for me, back in late February when I checked the dashboard and saw that ~10 cases were registered in my country, I decided that "nope, I am not going to use public transportation any time soon".

It should be mandatory for any politician or government clerk to take an exam in differential equations. There _was_ time to prepare, and there was a chance to contain the situation.

Yeah. And the funny thing is, a lot of people in the west - and presumably, most politicians and people in high places - understand how compound interest works. And it's the same thing.

You could literally rephrase the pandemic as: "Imagine total cases are dollars, then $country has 1000 dollars on their account, with 30% daily interest capitalized daily". Maybe that would've gotten through better?

> Europe and USA don't understand how exponent works.

Oh, they know how exponents work. They only care when it affects their bottom line. It's clear that the working class are just lambs for slaughter when the corporate overlords look at them.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. By delaying the response they made their bottom line sink exponentially deeper.

No, they were selling off assets in the final moments before the markets crashed -- buying themselves a bit more time by lying to their serfs.

They had conducted hundreds to thousands of tests before the first case in the country was detected.

It's a bit of luck that the coutry had a private biotech company that makes tests for viruses, and the CEO of said company looked at Wuhan and decided to get samples from China.

I suppose, just like every country has a military or people managing their transportation infrastructure, there should be a "pandemic watch". (Well the US had a good one until Trump/John Bolton defunded it)

The US military provide plenty of early advice suggesting a pandemic was on it way, but that advice was mostly ignored:

https://ktvz.com/politics/2020/03/21/washington-post-us-inte...

Some of the politicians did heed the advice, at least when it came to managing their share portfolios, taking the opportunity to sell up while telling their constituents there was no imminent threat:

https://www.propublica.org/article/senator-dumped-up-to-1-7-...

You're plainly wrong. In early January, S.K. government actually summoned all the private biotech companies and ordered them to prepare against potential epidemic scenarios.

Europe and the US even had more time, there is no excuse. It was clear from the day one how to or not to act. Europe and the US did not act at all in the beginning until it was to late to check each single case.

It’s not clear what ‘day 1’ means in the context of China though. China has kicked out all western reporters, constantly lies like Russia even when the truth is visible in the background, and arrests citizens who try to get around this system.

The west was never going to believe what was happening in China because it is impossible to know without invading them.

Now the focus is on bending the curve with minimal effort.